President Pushes Security Clearance Reform President Bush has ordered agencies to “produce a comprehensive reform proposal” for the security clearance process by April 30. The president issued the directive in a Feb. 5 memorandum to agency heads. While administration officials said they are making progress in speeding the processing of clearance applications, they acknowledged that problems remain. The law requires initial applications to be processed in an average of 74 days by December 2009. The current average is 118 days, according to the interagency Security Clearance Oversight Group. In a report issued Feb. 15, the group said the 74-day milestone is not likely to be reached without significant changes. An industry task force studying the issue found that on average, Secret clearances still took more than 200 days and Top Secret clearances took more than 300 days to process in 2007. The Oversight Group said the Defense Department takes 25 days longer to process applications from contractors than from its own military and civilian personnel. “DOD is working aggressively to streamline the Industry process,” the report said. At a Feb. 13 hearing of the Readiness Subcommittee of the House Armed Services Committee, an industry spokesman said the clearance process still requires considerable paper-shuffling, despite efforts to convert to digital systems. Ben Romero of the Information Technology Association of America testified that the Defense Department’s Joint Personnel Adjudication System “simply cannot handle digital fingerprints.” Prints are still taken with ink and paper. He said the system cannot digitally bundle the three main components of an application: fingerprints, the SF-86 security clearance form and the required signatures. Romero said DOD agrees that its system needs to be replaced, but does not have the money. While DOD accounts for the vast majority of clearance applications, it delegates most investigations to the Office of Personnel Management and its contractors. Romero said OPM’s electronic systems also have shortcomings that require the use of paper documents. Rep. Tom Davis, R-VA, warned that the emphasis on improving investigations could mean that applications backlogs would be pushed further down the pipeline to the adjudication phase. “That may make initial process numbers look better,” he said in a statement, “but the applicant still waiting for a clearance won’t notice any difference, and it doesn’t make the system any more responsive to agency or industry needs for cleared personnel.” Kathy Dillaman, who heads OPM’s clearance program, said President Bush’s directive “is challenging traditional processing from application through adjudication.”